1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus such as an electrophotographic, an ink jet or a thermal transfer apparatus and an information processing system using this kind of recording system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a recording system in which normal documents and confidential/secret documents are both to be printed and an information processing system using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A recording apparatus has previously been used as a data outputting device of an information processing apparatus such as a computer and a word processor. The information processing apparatus is defined as an apparatus for producing calculation data or document data to be printed, such as a computer or a word processor. Following the recent advancement of information processing techniques such as desk-top publishing techniques and file processing techniques, and the recent development of relevant devices, there has been an increasing need for publishing data inside a company by printing various types of documents by themselves. Prior to this, a company would ask outside printers to print such company documents. This trend of printing these various types of documents within a company has occurred because the printing and publishing inside the company can be performed quickly and less expensively and allows the company to maintain secrecy of the company information.
Since company documents include both general documents and documents covering confidential/secret information. (hereinafter to be referred to as confidential documents), it has been necessary to separate the time for printing confidential documents from the time for printing general documents. Otherwise it has been necessary for a person in charge of printing to attend the printing machine during the printing of confidential documents in order to maintain secrecy of the company documents, when printing and publishing is carried out inside the company.
In this case, confidential documents are not limited to the above-described documents including information which must be kept secret. The confidential documents mentioned in this application also include contract documents, budget documents, etc. which need to be separated in advance from the general documents.
In the case of general documents, there has been a problem that some work load is required to sort printed documents by destination when there are many distribution destinations for these documents.
In order to maintain secrecy of information, JP-A-60-12859, for example, discloses an invention which enables locking of sorters to provide private mail boxes. Further, in order to specify distribution destinations, JP-A-60-165666, for example, discloses an invention which enables printing of a bar code with a toner image at a part of a printed sheet of paper, reading this bar code with a reader and selecting a sorter for distributing the printed sheet.
However, according to the prior-art techniques, no consideration has been given to a method of keeping secrecy of information or a method of printing by providing a mark or the like on the printed sheet to indicate confidential documents although such confidential documents and general documents are printed together. Therefore, there has been a problem that it is difficult to separate and/or distinguish between printed general documents and printed confidential documents. A problem has also occurred that after printing confidential documents, it is necessary to collect the primed confidential documents from each sorter and stamp a seal on the documents which identifies the printed documents as confidential documents in order to call attention to the intended confidential handling of the documents.
Further, in the case of printing general documents, a supporting system is required to provide a suitable type of printing paper ranging from a thin paper having a total weight of 40 kg per a set of sheets to a thick paper having a total weight of 180 kg per a set, to meet various purposes. For example, when general documents are to be printed for the purpose of preparing OHP slides for a presentation, these documents need to be printed on OHP films, and when general documents are names and addresses for printing on envelopes, the documents need to be printed on glued sheets. Further, depending on the contents of documents to be printed, it may be necessary to use preprinted sheets of paper having printed formats in advance when specific contents such as charges or contracts are to be printed. According to the prior-art techniques, recording systems having a plurality of paper hoppers are being widely used. However, these hoppers are used only to separate sizes of papers, and no consideration has been given to the above-described wide support, so that there has been a problem on the degree of freedom in selecting types of sheets of paper.